Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. Newsweek says, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."

In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.

That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, among them: the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.

Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."

Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received a number of honorary degrees. On a lighter note, in 1992 and 1988 Esquire magazine named her one of the "Women We Love".

A frequent contributor to major newspapers and periodicals, she has published articles in The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Parade Magazine, New York Magazine, and others.

Before joining NPR in 1975, Totenberg served as Washington editor of New Times Magazine, and before that she was the legal affairs correspondent for the National Observer.

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down Puerto Rico's plan to restructure $20 billion in debt. The decision means it's now up to Congress to help the U.S. island territory out of its current financial crisis.

By a vote of 5-2, the court ruled that a local law enacted by Puerto Rico to restructure the debt of its financially strapped utilities violates the Federal Bankruptcy Code.

"Our constitutional structure does not permit this Court to rewrite the statute that Congress has enacted," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

The Supreme Court has ruled for the first time that judges must recuse themselves from reviewing cases in which they had a prior significant role.

By a vote of 5-3, the justices ruled that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied a defendant a fair hearing in a death penalty case because the chief justice refused to disqualify himself, even though he had been the district attorney overseeing the case decades earlier.

Most people don't know who Donald Verrilli is, but when major cases are argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, Verrilli is the man who represents the U.S. government. He is the seventh longest serving solicitor general in American history, having been in the position for five years, and now, he is stepping down.

President Obama announced Verrilli's imminent departure on Thursday, calling him "a dedicated public servant who has helped our nation live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all."

The U.S. Supreme Court took action in two capital cases Tuesday, with dissenting justices from the right and left pricking their colleagues in dissent.

In one, the court ordered the resentencing of a convicted Arizona killer because the jury was not told that if he were sentenced to life in prison, there was no chance he would be paroled. And in the other, the court declined to hear a broad constitutional challenge to the death penalty.

In 2014, Trump Entertainment Resorts, including the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., was in dire straights financially. When the company filed for bankruptcy protection, it won a ruling from a federal bankruptcy judge stripping the casino workers of their health insurance and payments to the pension fund.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a black Georgia man convicted of murder by an all-white jury should have a new trial because the prosecution deliberately excluded African-Americans from the jury based on their race.

The court's decision reversed as "clearly erroneous" an earlier ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court, which had said the defendant had not proved racial discrimination in the selection of his jury.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a case that tests the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

At issue is a great deal more than one case.

The federal government contends that if the Supreme Court voids the conviction, it could cripple enforcement of laws against public corruption. The defense counters that if the conviction is upheld, it would turn ordinary political acts into crimes.

Twenty-one years ago, the nation was rocked by the largest domestic terrorism attack it had ever experienced. A bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people, including 19 children in a day care center on the ground floor.

President Obama's controversial executive actions on immigration were challenged in the Supreme Court on Monday.

While it's impossible to glean how the court will ultimately decide the case, the eight justices seemed evenly split along ideological lines during oral arguments, leaving a real possibility of a 4-4 tie.

The fate of one of President Obama's controversial executive actions on immigration goes before the Supreme Court on Monday. The action would grant temporary, quasi-legal status and work permits to as many as 4 million parents who entered the U.S. illegally prior to 2010. The president's order applies only to parents of children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.

The U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday that the federal government cannot, before trial, seize the assets of the accused if those assets are unrelated to the crime and are needed to pay a defense attorney.

The court's ruling came in the case of a Miami woman named Sila Luis, who was accused of Medicare and banking fraud. Prosecutors charged that she used kickbacks and other schemes to fraudulently obtain $45 million.

The Supreme Court has ordered more legal briefs in the birth control case it heard last week, indicating that the justices are struggling to avoid another 4-4 tie. The case tests the religious liberty claims against the Obamacare mandate for birth control in all health insurance plans.

The U.S. Supreme Court has deadlocked on a 4-4 vote in a major labor case. The court, without further comment, announced the tie vote Tuesday. The result is that union opponents have failed, for now, to reverse a long-standing decision that allows states to mandate "fair share" fees from nonunion workers.